


lay me gently

by uno_steel



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, in which Ned Chicane is temporarily a ghost, spoilers for Episode 28
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 07:04:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19079950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uno_steel/pseuds/uno_steel
Summary: Ned wakes up.





	lay me gently

Someone sighs above him. “Well, hell,” they say. “What do we do now?”

”Is the morgue still open?” another voice asks. “I mean, what with the shapeshifter—”

Ned’s senses are dulled. He struggles to keep up with the conversation, to name the familiar voices. He can’t quite manage it, so instead, he focuses on the parts of his surroundings that are a little easier to interpret.

The stars are shining, out in full force. That means—something, he thinks. Something to do with moonlight and the—the—

It slips away from him.

Ned would frown, except he isn’t sure if he can. There’s a strange distance between himself and his own body, almost like the connection has been severed. It’s like he’s floating a couple of inches above himself, close enough to think he should be able to feel something, yet too far for there to be any actual sensation.

A newcomer barges into the clearing. That isn’t the most accurate way to describe their arrival, but they aren’t there one moment and they are in the next, with only a brief flash of light to herald their appearance.

They speak, but their voice resonates oddly in his ears. He can understand the reply, though, as it comes from one of the figures above him.

“How did it go on your side, Aubrey?”

Aubrey. Aubrey—that’s someone he knows, he thinks, or it’s someone he _should_ know. That name is familiar to him, and important, and if he could just listen through the ringing in his head—

He loses a few seconds like that, frustrated by his own limitations, but he then realizes that he’s inadvertently limiting himself. He has to focus and remain in the present if he wants to understand what’s happening around him.

A wave of heat washes over him, then, accompanied by a glowing light. The heat is indirect, more of a gentle warmth than anything, but it fades as quickly as it appears.

That’s when Ned starts to panic. It’s a delayed reaction, sure, but that gentle warmth was the first real thing he’d felt since waking up and it _hurt_ , like pins and needles traveling across a body that’d already lost all of its sensation, which—

Oh.

Oh, Ned is such a fool. 

He remembers the stars, now, and how they had faded out of sight as a uniform wall of gray overtook his vision.

If he concentrates, he can remember the blonde woman in the parka, gone monstrous and feral. He can remember tackling her to the ground, unwilling to fire despite the danger she posed to everyone gathered there.

He doesn’t think he wants to remember what happened after that, but the knowledge comes anyway. The scent of gunpowder, the warmth spreading across his back—it floods back all at once. Ned wants to cry out, even as he knows with a dreadful certainty that he cannot.

Aubrey was trying to heal him, he realizes, and she failed. Ned is well and truly dead, and his consciousness fades even as he thinks it.

* * *

He is dead, but he is not gone. Not quite.

He slumbers for a while, waking up in fits and spurts. There is something keeping him tethered here, keeping his spirit from moving on.

Ned knows his fair share of ghost stories, but he has never imagined that he would take part in one.

It is becoming harder and harder to retain his consciousness whenever he wakes up. He has no way to tell, but he thinks it’s possible that more time is passing between each occurrence.

He is still tethered to Kepler, West Virginia, but the afterlife is beckoning to him, too, promising serenity and a return to the natural order of all things.

It’s tempting. It’s so, _so_ tempting. But he can’t let himself give in, not yet.

* * *

He awakens at his own funeral. Kepler’s residents are gathered by Amnesty Lodge, but they’re no longer wielding weapons. Ned sees a wide array of familiar faces, but Dani and Pigeon are conspicuously absent.

That’s okay. Ned doesn’t blame them.

Whatever has happened in the interim between his death and the present, it appears that the world hasn’t ended, and for that, Ned is grateful.

He spots Duck near the front of the crowd. Ned can’t hear a word he says, but from the looks of it, he’s making an attempt at a eulogy. His friend is sputtering almost as bad as if he’s telling a lie, but Ned thinks that he is merely overwhelmed with emotion, and his heart breaks at the sight.

He doesn’t regret tackling Dani, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see the aftermath of his decision.

Then, it is Aubrey’s turn. She limps her way through the crowd to take Duck’s place, and although her voice wavers, she doesn’t cry.

“Ned and I had a complicated history,” she begins, and her voice is clearer than any he’s heard since his death.

For a moment, Ned thinks he’ll be able to hear her speech. He is so enraptured by this brief success that he hardly notices as his consciousness once again returns to the aether.

* * *

The two remaining members of the Pine Guard stand by Ned’s old desk. Kirby has elected to give them their privacy, and stands a good distance away.

”Goddamnit, Ned,” Duck says, but he doesn’t look angry. He just looks tired and more than a little sad.

Beside him, Aubrey is quiet. She crumples the letter between her fingers unthinkingly, like she’s seeking a physical outlet for her distress.

Then, she turns, and Ned can almost kid himself into thinking that she is looking at him. Perhaps her third eye has opened, letting her know that her deceased friend is there to witness the scene.

“I can’t be mad at him,” she says, and the illusion fades. Aubrey wipes away a tear and lays the letter down gently on his desk and there is nothing but the wind, rattling in the trees, lifting him higher and higher until nothing remains.


End file.
